Visions of Annihilation

The fascist Ustasha regime and its militias carried out a ruthless campaign of ethnic cleansing that killed an estimated half million Serbs, Jews, and Gypsies, and ended only with the defeat of the Axis powers in World War II. In Visions of Annihilation, Rory Yeomans analyzes the Ustasha movement’s use of culture to appeal to radical nationalist sentiments and legitimize its genocidal policies. He shows how the movement attempted to mobilize poets, novelists, filmmakers, visual artists, and intellectuals as purveyors of propaganda and visionaries of a utopian society. Yeomans chronicles the foundations of the movement, its key actors and ideologies, and reveals the unique conditions present in interwar Croatia that led to the rise of fascism.

Frontmatter

Copyright

Contents

Preface

Visions of Annihilation is a case study in the cultural politics of mass murder.
It aims to demonstrate how one European fascist movement, the Croatian
Ustasha regime, used popular culture as well as ideas of national regeneration
to legitimize its rule and, in particular, its campaign of mass murder ...

Introduction

On 8 September 1942, the third Zagreb economic and trade exhibition
in the Independent State of Croatia was officially opened. The press portrayed
it as an unparalleled triumph for the young state: newly constructed
trams took visitors to the entrance of the Zagreb fairground; ...

Chapter 1. The Generation of Struggle: Ustasha Students and the Construction of a New Elite

On 23 April 1941 eleven hundred student and high school members of
the Ustasha movement gathered in the courtyard of the main university
building. Led by the commander of the Ustasha University Center,
Zdenko Blažeković, these “steeliest of Ustasha warriors,” with the Croatian
tricolor on their arms, ...

Chapter 2. Annihilate the Old! The Cult of Youth and the Problem of National Regeneration

While being an Ustasha meant many things, above all, it meant being
young. Youth, dynamism, and energy were at the center of the
Ustasha movement’s ideology and worldview. As Ustaška Mladež, the
Ustasha Youth journal, commented in June 1942: “To be an Ustasha means
to be eternally young and eternally a warrior.” ...

Chapter 3. Merciless Warriors and Militant Heroines: Making a New Ustasha Man and Woman

In December 1941 Maca Minić, a female Ustasha Youth leader, attempted
to answer two questions: What would the role of women in the new state
be, and what part would the Ustasha movement play in women’s lives? As
Mimić pointed out, since the movement had come to power, young women
had been gathered into the organization, ...

Illustrations

Chapter 4. Social Justice and the Campaign for Taste: Cultural Values after the Revolution of Blood

We were confronted with a wasteland and had to build everything
from the ground up.” So recalled the regional leader of Prigorje Marko
Lamešić regarding the task confronting the Ustasha movement immediately
after it came to power. Speaking at an Ustasha rally in June 1942,
Lamešić, standing on a speaker’s platform ...

Chapter 5. Between Annihilation and Regeneration: Literature, Language, and National Revolution

On 5 December 1941, in the cultural pages of Hrvatski narod, the novelist
Zlatko Milković drew attention to a matinee performance at the Croatian
National Theater of readings of the works of the younger generation
of poets by famous Croatian actors and actresses, students from the acting
school, and the poets themselves. ...

Writing in May 1941, Ivan Šarić, bishop of Sarajevo, nostalgically recollected
his clandestine meetings with Ustashas in South America in the
1930s. He recalled the Ustashas he had met as “good and self-sacrificing
believers, men of God and the nation.” For their part, he wrote, the Ustashas
were attached to their priestly followers. ...

Conclusion

By the end of 1944, an apocalyptic spirit reigned in the capital. The Independent
State of Croatia was close to collapse, and in fact, the control
of the Ustasha regime throughout the state was so limited that the Poglavnik
earned himself the dubious sobriquet the “Mayor of Zagreb.” As the
state deteriorated, ...

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